


The Next Stage of Human Evolution

by AristoKitty, TurtleTotem



Series: The Better Men [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Crossover, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, M/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:07:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AristoKitty/pseuds/AristoKitty, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month ago, Erik didn't even know he had a daughter, and Anya didn't know magic existed. Now she's at Hogwarts, and neither of them has any idea how to feel about that.</p>
<p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/304462">The Better Men</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anya is first introduced in [this chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/349676/chapters/818351) of _The Better Men_ 's Bonus Materials. She is portrayed for us here by [Isabelle Fuhrman, circa 2009](http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/30400000/Isabelle-at-the-2009-Teen-Choice-Awards-isabelle-fuhrman-30418634-423-594.jpg).

"I already have a dad," Anya said.

Her dad had broad shoulders and blond hair, smiled a lot and rocked a U.S. Army uniform. This guy – this stranger that had dumped Anya with his freaky 'magic' DNA – he didn't look like he ever smiled at all. His hair was combed down flat, like he was determined not to let it escape, and between that and the black robes, he kind of looked like the Grim Reaper.

Erik was a teacher, her mom had said, at the magic school she'd be going to now. 'Cuz didn't he look all warm and cuddly like that.

"I know you have a dad," Erik said, and Anya expected he'd continue with something like, 'I'd like us to be friends at least, anyway' but he just stopped there. He wasn't a talkative fellow, she'd noticed that already. Barely said a word to her mom when he came to pick her up from the hotel, loaded her trunk into the cab without talking to the cabbie – and how unfair was it that she could only bring what fit inside a trunk? And how well-and-truly _weird_ was it that he'd had the cab, still holding her trunk, stop and wait for them on a random street corner while he led her away through some kind of restaurant and out the other side into an alley?

Well, not nearly as weird as Erik reaching the end of the alley and tapping bricks in the wall until it _opened up_ to reveal a whole new bustling street that really should not have been there.

_We are so not in Kansas anymore._

"It's going to be a very different world," her parents had told her. "It's a different country, to begin with. And from what Erik's said, the wizards live in their own peculiar world within that. It's going to be confusing at first, but Erik will help you."

Yeah, like he'd helped her the first eleven years of her life by being a complete non-presence. Like he'd helped when her magic caused all kinds of weird things to happen around her that no one could explain. She'd managed without Erik's help all this time, and she didn't need it now. So when Erik tried to take her hand and lead her through the brick-wall doorway into the Secret Street of Oz, she shook it off and walked through by herself.

"This is Diagon Alley," Erik said, not reacting to her rejection of his hand. "The main reason to come to London, where wizards are concerned. We'll buy your school supplies here."

"Do I actually have to wear a pointy black hat?" That item on the supply list had come closer than anything else to convincing Anya that the whole Hogwarts letter was a joke.

Erik chuckled a little, under his breath – was that the hint of a smile? "They're not required on an everyday basis anymore, but you should have one for special occasions."

"Like what? Halloween?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but Erik said, "Yes, exactly," as if proud she was getting the hang of things. Anya fought a sudden urge to run back to their cab and give it directions straight to the airport before she missed her parents' flight.

While Erik picked out her schoolbooks, black robes, an armload of quills and parchment (what was wrong with pens and paper?), and an actual _cauldron_ the size of her head, Anya mostly just stared around at the nuthouse she'd stepped into. There were tons of people bustling around, all wearing robes in wild neon colors, and there seemed to be something bizarre happening with each one of them. One man was being followed by his purchases, bobbing along in the air behind him; there went a woman holding a wildly-struggling book with teeth; and across the cobbled street, two people found each other over the heads of the crowd by shooting sparks out of... she supposed they had to be magic wands.

It was all very colorful and interesting, she had to admit. But what were the rules? How did you ever know what was going to happen next? The cobbles under her feet could rise up and attack her at any moment, and it would be perfectly in keeping with the atmosphere.

Inside one of Diagon Alley's many tiny, crooked shops, Erik asked the man at the counter for "his usual order, plus two jars of puffer-fish eyes and one of bat-spleen."

Anya could only stare in disbelieving horror as the clerk piled the counter with foul-smelling little sacks and bottles, a rattling bunch of claws tied together like bananas, and several jars of _animal organs._ The puffer-fish eyes all turned to stare at her, blinking.

"What's the matter?" Erik asked.

"This is insane," Anya said faintly. "This is totally insane and _disgusting,_ what are you evendoing?"

"These are for potions," Erik said, as if that should make it better.

"Then I'm never going near a potion. Ever."

Erik regarded her for a moment with his eyes narrowed. "Potions is a required subject," he said at last. "I teach it."

She finally tore her eyes away from the jar and turned them on Erik, feeling her face stretch into an expression of horrified disgust that, incredibly, made him chuckle.

"You'll get used to it," he said, and ruffled her hair.

"I'll wait for you outside," Anya said, and fled the shop.

Their next stop was Ollivander's Wand Shop, and Erik grumbled the whole way.

"Old Mr. Ollivander will fight you to the death over it, but a pre-made wand is never going to be as good as a wand made especially for you," he said. "You might get a very good match, or you get a merely adequate match, and that can have serious effects on your spell efficacy. A bespoke wand, on the other hand, is matched to you at every stage of the wandmaking process. There's no substitute for that."

"Okay, then why aren't I getting a bespoke wand?"

Erik sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "For one thing, we don't have the time – the process takes months and the new term starts in a week. For another, there aren't many of the old wandmaking families left. My parents... Your grandparents." That thought seemed to snag him for a second, and honestly it kind of snagged her, too. She hadn't thought about having more grandparents. "Your grandparents were some of the last, and best. They died when I was very young, before they could teach me much of the craft."

Anya thought about Steve, her real-but-not-biological-dad, showing her pictures of his parents, who had died before she was born. How sad he always looked, even though it was so long ago. Without thinking about it, she squeezed Erik's hand and said, "I'm sorry."

He stared at her a second, then returned the hand-squeeze. "I'm sorry, too. They would have loved you very much."

Anya had no idea how to respond to that. Would she have loved them, too? Did Erik love her? Was she supposed to love him back?

Mr. Ollivander, an extremely delicate-looking old man watched over by a concerned nephew, gave her some eight or nine wands to try, one after another – usually snatching them away again before she could do more than tighten her grip. Finally she picked up one that felt warm and right in her hand, and shot bright silver sparks into the air.

"Dragon heartstring core," Mr. Ollivander said musingly. "Very powerful, very quick... can be flamboyant, though, can be temperamental. An unusual core for hazel wood – such a sensitive wood, very responsive to its wielder's emotional state... could be a dangerous combination with dragon heartstring. You must learn self-control, Miss Eisenhardt, you must control yourself if you would control your wand, otherwise it might get quite away from you."

"Perhaps she should have a different wand, then," Erik said peevishly. 

Before Anya knew it, Erik and Mr. Ollivander were tossing phrases like "unreliable" and "elitist" and "the wand chooses the wizard!" sharply back and forth, while Mr. Ollivander's nephew danced nervously in the background, obviously concerned his elderly uncle would bust something in his mounting wrath. She tuned them out, much too busy examining her new wand.

She had a magic wand. How bizarre was this? How did it work? Could she make it do sparks again? She tried, wrinkling her face with concentration, and felt a peculiar sliding sensation, as if hot water was running out of her hand into the wand. Peculiar, yet strangely familiar and natural.

Sparks of all colors started streaming out of the wand's tip, corkscrewing through the air accompanied by a high musical whistling.

_Dude._ Anya stood slack-jawed as the sparks slowly faded. Erik and the Ollivanders had stopped to watch, too.I'm doing **magic.**

Maybe this wouldn't be _all_ bad.

_Definitely_ not all bad, Anya thought as they walked into the Magical Menagerie. "I can't believe I get to bring a pet!"

"It's not just a pet," Erik said. "Owls, for instance, are extremely useful animals, carrying letters and packages. They're the most common choice. If students prefer one of the other permitted animals, we encourage them to choose one that has some sort of magical power. What you see here are animals that have been bred by wizarding families for centuries for their intelligence and talents; some can mind-link with their owner, hypnotize people, walk through walls, intensify the magical energies in their immediate area..."

"And what if it's just a plain old cat or rat or whatever?" Anya asked, staring around wide-eyed at the profusion of animals. One entire wall was devoted to owls, every kind of owl imaginable, sleeping or hooting or flapping on their perches. Adult cats prowled the store freely, and kittens tumbled their way through a window display. Cages of rats, ferrets, toads – how was she supposed to pick just one?

"Even a non-magical pet serves a purpose," Erik said. "You learn responsibility. Your pet is dependent on you for their care; you have to think of their needs. If you don't take care of your pet, you'll lose it, one way or another." He gave her a narrow-eyed sideways glance. "I don't expect to have to intervene in your treatment of your pet. If I do, you'll know you've screwed up very badly."

_Um, okay, yikes._ "Do you have a pet?"

"Yes, an owl. Charles had a cat." He touched the gold ring on his finger, face softening for a moment.

Oh, right, Charles. _Another_ new parent for Anya to get used to, and how the heck was she even supposed to feel about her biological father being married to a man? If he liked guys, what was he doing with Anya's mom in the first place? She'd asked her mom that, but she'd just shaken her head, looking amused and sort of thoughtful, and said it wasn't always that simple. Why _not?_

What was Charles going to be like? She looked at Erik and tried to think of what kind of person he would want to marry. It was hard to imagine him being in love with anyone. Maybe if it was someone just as gruff and sour-faced as himself. That was going to be a barrel of fun.

"So what would you like, then?"

Anya jumped a little at Erik's voice, having half-forgotten she was here to make a decision. "Well, I... I don’t know," she admitted. "I’ve never had a pet before, unless you count James."

"Who?"

"My little brother. Didn't you see him, at the hotel? The little ball of motion zooming around in a diaper? He has buck teeth so we have to call him James now."

"...What?"

Anya drew in an impatient breath and explained, "Dad's best friend's name was James Buchanan Barnes but everyone called him Bucky. James is named after him, he's James Buchanan Rogers, and we called him Bucky too until his front teeth grew in and Mom said it was cruel to call him Bucky when he actually was buck-toothed, so now we call him James. I don't think I want an owl." The owls didn't look terribly cuddly, with their sharp beaks and claws and their huge staring eyes.

"You can get whatever you want. This is your choice." Erik's expression went strangely mulish. "My owl was chosen for me. But you choose your own."

Well, of course she did. Why was this under discussion? Was she supposed to feel grateful to Erik for not being a humongous jerk and trying to make her decisions for her?Trying, by the way, because he would _not_ succeed.

Anya looked at Erik sideways, then turned back to surveying the options. 

Toads were right out, because ew. She'd already decided against an owl. There were also ravens and ferrets and rats...

Her eyes fell on the kittens in the window display, and she felt warm relief settle in her stomach. Yes, a cat. A perfectly normal kitten like any kid could have – none of these freaky weird wizard animals. Maybe she could even find one without any powers.

***

"She probably doesn't even have any powers," Erik grumbled as they stepped out of the Magical Menagerie.

"But she's adorable," Anya cooed at the calico kitten in its wicker carry-basket, "aren't you, baby?" She wedged a finger through the wicker slats; the kitten mewed and moved away.

The little calico had been noticeably older than any of the other kittens, curled up in a corner by herself. It had taken several minutes for Anya to coax her out far enough to be stroked, longer still to earn a tentative purr. Erik had tried to steer her attention to some of the friendlier kittens that had already manifested powers, but Anya wouldn't hear of it. To be honest, she wasn't even sure why she liked the little calico so much, except that she kind of looked like Anya felt – overwhelmed and out of place, wishing she were back with her mother.

Not that the kitten was showing any gratitude about being rescued at the moment. She mewed and shifted around in her basket constantly, claws popping against the wicker as they made their way out of Diagon Alley.

Anya was a little surprised to find their cab still waiting. She was _not_ surprised at how high the meter had climbed, but Erik apparently was; he and the driver had a long argument in which words like "Muggle pickpocket" and "weirdo in a bathrobe" got thrown around. Anya rolled her eyes, arranged their purchases in the trunk, then sat quietly in the backseat of the cab with the kitten's basket on her lap.

Finally Erik threw a double handful of bills and coins at the cabbie with a snarl of "fine, here's all the Muggle money I've got, just take it and get us to King's Cross Station," and joined Anya in the backseat. The cab rejoined traffic with a lurch that rocked the basket on her lap, startling the kitten into a sort of wail.

"Shh, it'll be all right." Anya murmured to the kitten. "You're with me now, baby. I'm going to take good care of you." She worked a finger into the basket again, to pet her, but once again the kitten shied away from it.

From the corner of her eye, Anya saw Erik watching her with the same soft sort of expression he'd worn when thinking about Charles, back in the shop. He raised a hand, as if to touch her shoulder or her hair; Anya tensed, looking away, and he set the hand back down again.

They rode all the way to the train station in silence.

***

"What, _no_ I am not running through the wall, is this how your sense of humor works, why are you – LET GO OF – AUUGHH!"

That had been King's Cross Station.

A gaggle of her future teachers, pinching her cheeks and exclaiming over her resemblance to Erik. 

That had been the Hogwarts Express.

Darkness falling as she, Erik, and three teachers bundled into a _literal horseless carriage_ , which should not have been any creepier than a car but totally was, and her poor kitten mewing and mewing while Professor Frost looked at the basket like it had pooped in her soup – after all that, Anya figured that by the time they arrived at Hogwarts, she deserved a medal for not having bitten anyone. The kitten, too

"You'll be staying in the Headmaster's Tower with me and Charles," Erik said, leading her up the front steps of the _actual gigantic castle_ she now lived in. "At least until you're Sorted into a house." Which was not a sentence that made sense, but um, wait—

"Headmaster's Tower?"

"Didn't I tell you? Charles is the headmaster."

Oh heaven _help._ Like Erik being a teacher wasn't bad enough, the other new Grim Glaring Parental in her life had to be the _principal._

"Erik!" called an excited voice from the top of the stairs, just inside the enormous doorway. Erik, glancing up, gave a real smile for the first time all day.

"Easy, now," he murmured, going to the excited man's side. "Remember, no smothering. Anya," he said, louder, "this is my husband, Charles. Charles, this is Anya."

"Hello!" The man stuck out a hand.

Anya didn't mean to be rude, she really didn't, but she couldn't help gaping a bit. Grim Glaring Parental indeed – the man looked like an overeager chihuahua, trembling and breathless and sort of bouncing with joy. He was drop-dead gorgeous, which was all kinds of unfair, and looked about a million times nicer and more friendly than Erik. Of course Erik looked nicer now, too, as if Charles's smile was contagious. They were holding hands.

Charles was still holding his other hand out for her to shake, and Anya shuffled the kitten's basket to reach for it – only to find herself gaping some more instead.

"Dude. You're... floating." She felt dumb for saying it, because obviously he already knew; it had to be on purpose, the way he was strapped into that brace thing, which seemed to go all the way up his back. But come on, her new stepfather was _hovering three inches off the ground._ That kind of thing demanded comment.

"Ah, well, yes I am," Charles said, giving Erik a scolding sort of look. "Perhaps I should be flattered that Erik didn't consider this important enough to explain beforehand. I was in an accident about two years ago—"

"Accident?" Erik sounded outraged. "Attempted murder in the course of _saving the world—"_

"—and I'm mostly paralyzed from the waist down," Charles continued serenely. "The brace lets me stay upright rather than in a chair, but I can't walk, so I just sort of glide along." He demonstrated, spreading his arms and floating in a small circle.

"That's really cool," Anya blurted. "It's like you're riding an invisible Roomba or something, I mean how _cool_ is that?"

"An invisible what?" Erik said.

"Can you make it go higher? How fast can you go? Does it do stairs?"

They walked all the way to Headmaster's Tower exchanging rapid-fire questions and answers about the brace and what he could and couldn't do with it, punctuated with occasional commentary about the castle and the moving paintings and the trick step on the second floor. Carrying Anya's trunk and packages – everything but the cat basket – Erik silently brought up the rear.

 

'Boden's Mate,' which was apparently some kind of chess term, turned out to be the password to the Headmaster's Tower; the "family password," Charles said, as opposed to the Emergency password that would alert Charles to its use. Because no one else could be allowed unsupervised access to the Tower, it was very important that Anya not tell anyone the family password.

"No problem," she said, because who would she even tell, and also she had actually forgotten it already, Bo-what?

She caught Erik looking at her as they stepped onto the moving staircase. "What?"

"Pufferfish eyes unsettle you, but not moving stairs?"

"Like I've never seen an escalator before? Not a spiral one, but still. Been to a few malls, dude." She very firmly did not let herself look down, or think about how high they were going.

Charles looked over his shoulder at Erik with one eyebrow raised. "Those silly Muggles with their useless technology, hm, Erik?"

Erik just grumbled and shifted the weight of Anya's trunk.

*** 

A clock with glass butterflies, huge squashy couch, framed photographs that moved, three different chessboards with games in progress, books everywhere, glass doors onto a balcony, a massive bathtub that made Erik grin at Charles in a _profoundly_ disturbing way – that was the grand tour.

"Ohhh, who is this little darling? Come on out and – OW!" 

"Bad kitty! Don't hurt Charles!"

"She's just overwhelmed. I think we should let her alone for a while. Goodness, I never knew a kitten could growl like that."

That was letting the kitten out of the basket.

Anya poking in fascinated horror at her food, which was a gooey mass of mystery meat and was that _cabbage_ , Charles trying to eat with a bandaged hand, and a whole lot of awkward silences. Charles kept jabbing Erik with his elbow, trying to make him start a conversation, but since Anya couldn't come up with much to say in response to his attempts, they withered and died one by one.

That was their first family dinner.

***

Erik's study was a dark, stern sort of room, everything neat and sharp as a math problem. Anya's little cot, decked out in mountains of pink and white ruffles, with a little teddy bear on top like a cherry, looked positively _hilarious_ there.

"Do you like it?" Charles asked anxiously, while the kitten growled at them from under the desk.

"It's _awesome,"_ Anya said, grinning. She wasn't usually that big into the Sparkly Princess deal – her room at home was done in green, black, and purple – but that bed was super-cute. It would be like sleeping in a cupcake.

Once she was snuggled down into it, though, in her favorite polka-dot pajamas, sleep turned out not to be so easy. The room was full of little noises and movements. Wind moaned around the walls of the tower, reminding her how high up they were ( _it's not gonna fall, it's not gonna fall, it's been here for hundreds of years and it's not gonna fall_ ). Her poor unhappy kitten shifted around under the desk, scratching in her sandbox, spitting and growling at Anya unless she lay perfectly still. On Erik's desk, a little framed picture of him and Charles in tuxedos – a wedding picture? – stayed in constant motion, its inhabitants kissing and hugging and smiling and staring deep into each other's eyes. _Oh, come on._ Anya laid the picture down flat.

Up high on a shelf, a ship in a bottle rocked along through sunny seas, with actual little sailors running around on deck. After a while a storm brewed, inside the bottle, and the ship sank, but just as she was climbing out of bed wondering if she should call for help or something, a pod of dolphins came out of nowhere and rescued the sailors, helping them to the surface.

Through the cracked-open door, she could hear Charles and Erik talking softly, a low murmur with only the occasional word or phrase jumping out.

"...eight words to me all day." That was Erik.

"It's a lot of changes for her all at once," Charles replied, and then some more murmuring before, "It's Hogwarts! What child could resist, hm?"

_This one could,_ Anya thought, and was surprised to feel tears prickle in her eyes. _I want to go home, to my own room and my real parents and my real school._

"Well, you were a very strange child," Charles was saying.

"Mmm. You loved me anyway."

"Did I? Why would I do that?"

"I have no idea."

Talking was replaced by shifting-motion noises and – oh _gosh_ they were _kissing._ Anya rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head.

***

When Anya woke the next morning, the kitten was curled up against her stomach. She tried to stay still, but eventually her face itched; the moment she moved, the kitten hissed and ran back under the desk.

***

"It's a shame Raven's not here yet," Charles said over breakfast. "Professor Darkholme, that is. I suppose she's your step-aunt? She's away until the start of term, meeting her fiancé’s parents – that's Professor McCoy, Care of Magical Creatures. Most of the other teachers are here already. There's still a week until the start of term; I recommend you take advantage of that to meet everyone and learn your way around."

Erik, it seemed, had nothing to say on that matter; he was so sleepy it was almost cute, holding onto his coffee cup for dear life and squinting at her like he wasn't sure where she'd come from. Anya made a face at him when Charles wasn't looking, and went to explore.

Exploring was awful; she always felt like she was being watched, even when there were none of the creepy living paintings around, and she spent every minute expecting either them or the walls to attack her. Once, the staircase she was on detached suddenly from its destination and _swung out over empty space_ to the opposite side. Anya screamed, clinging to the banister with her eyes squeezed shut, and it was several minutes after the staircase stopped moving before she could stand to open them again.

When she did, her knuckles still white around the banister and her chest heaving, she found she was now facing a corridor she recognized. It would lead her straight back to the Headmaster's Tower, if she hung a left. She could go hide under the desk with her cat.

She imagined Erik's face, if she came crawling back after only an hour, too big a sissy to walk around an empty building by herself.

She took a deep breath and went back the other way, to try a new corridor.

 

She ran into three teachers that first day. One of them, Professor Frost, was the blonde lady who had been on the train with her and Erik and had turned her nose up at Anya, or the kitten, or maybe both. Her classroom was a long, narrow place that could have been claustrophobic, but was done up in enough white and crystal to make it feel airy instead. Anya liked the classroom. She couldn't say the same for Professor Frost, whose reaction to Anya wandering in had been to raise an eyebrow and ask if she was lost or just nosy.

Professors MacTaggert and Cassidy were much nicer, even after she accidentally interrupted them feeding each other grapes in the Great Hall (and what the heck, were all the teachers paired off here? Was it a job requirement or just a perk?).

"I'm the Deputy Headmistress, and an old friend of your stepdad's," MacTaggert said. "He's been so eager to meet you!"

"I could tell by the way he bounced," Anya said, which made both of the teachers laugh.

"I guess you're staying in the Tower with them until you're Sorted," MacTaggert said.

"Yeah, people keep mentioning that, sorted how? I feel like laundry."

Chuckling, Cassidy had explained about the four Hogwarts Houses.

"So basically," Anya said, counting them off on her fingers, "Gryffindors are the brave ones, Ravenclaws are the smart ones, Hufflepuffs are the nice ones, and Slytherins are the mean ones."

"Well, that’s a gross oversimplification. For instance, Slytherins aren't all mean," MacTaggert said.

"Yeah, they just have a much higher chance of it," Cassidy muttered. MacTaggert smacked him.

"Your dad's a Slytherin, Anya," she said, and Anya bit her tongue on the words _Not exactly proof they aren’t mean._ "Charles and Raven are Ravenclaws."

"Slytherin lite," Cassidy said, and MacTaggert smacked him again.

"I bet you two are Hufflepuffs," Anya said. “You’re nice.”

"We are Hufflepuffs, and in fact I'm the Head of House," MacTaggert said. "You'll be more than welcome in Hufflepuff House, if the Sorting goes that way."

"Yeah, it would be fun to watch Erik's head explode!" This time all MacTaggert had to do was raise an arm, and Cassidy ducked under the table, still snickering.

"So, what, Slytherins don't like Hufflepuffs?" Anya asked, snagging a grape.

"Slytherins sneer at Hufflepuffs," Cassidy said from under the table. "But it’s Gryffindors they _hate."_

"Don't listen to him," MacTaggert said, glaring down at Cassidy. "Inter-house rivalry is _pointless, counterproductive, and actively discouraged by school staff."_

"Except for Quidditch!" Cassidy said, jabbing a finger into the air.

"Except for Quidditch," MacTaggert acknowledged. "All is fair in love and Quidditch."

"I'm the Quidditch coach, by the way," Cassidy said, emerging from beneath the table and puffing out his chest. "And flying instructor. They used to call me Cannonball Cassidy, Banshee on a Broomstick – I had a signature scream, see, whenever I scored—"

"Wait, broomstick? Flying?" Anya nearly choked on a grape. "You guys actually fly around on broomsticks?"

"Of course! You'll love it, Anya, it's the most amazing feeling! The wind in your hair—"

"I'll pass, thanks," she said, swallowing hard.

"Well, I sure hope you'll pass. It's a required class."

At that, Anya excused herself as politely as she could manage, and sat down in the hallway to put her head between her knees.

School didn't start for a week still. She'd find some way to get out of flying class. She _would._ Everything was gonna be fine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anya settles in... sort of.

To Anya's surprise, she started to get a feel for the castle after a few days. Erik had laughed when she asked for a map, saying that to his knowledge Hogwarts had never held still long enough to be mapped, but he did take her through the route to and from the Great Hall several times, until she had it memorized, and a few other classrooms she was certain to need as a first-year; Charms, Transfiguration, his own Potions class which was literally taught in the _dungeon._ At first it was all bewildering, but slowly she started to feel that the castle had a rhythm of its own. When she started following her gut instead of trying to build a map in her mind, she stopped getting lost nearly so often, even when the hallways changed around on her.

"Intuition," Charles said proudly. "It's a form of magic – divination, specifically. It takes most students much longer to catch on – I can't wait for you to be in my Divination class! That's several years in the future, unfortunately."

Anya, suppressing a gulp, tried not to think about _several years in the future._ A week was about as much as she could handle right now.

In addition to exploring the castle and meeting teachers, she spent a great deal of time on her knees in Erik's study, trying to make friends with the kitten, whom she named Violet on account of her shyness.

"Shy indeed," Erik muttered, rubbing a half-healed scratch on his hand from the one time he tried to feed her. "Sociopathic little monster..." He shut up at a sharp elbow-jab from his husband.

She'd noticed already that her phone didn't seem to get much signal out here, but it wasn't until the second time she tried to text a picture of Violet to her mother that she found out why.

"Might as well put that away," Erik said, looking up from his newspaper when Anya started shouting at the misbehaving phone. "Electronics don't work here."

Anya stared at him in horror. "What... what do you mean? _All_ electronics?" She hadn't needed her alarm clock, been too busy to dig out her iPod, tried to use her desk lamp but couldn't find anywhere to plug it in... Wouldn't _any_ of them work here?

"There's too much magic at Hogwarts, it sends Muggle technology into a tailspin. I've never seen anything more complex than a wristwatch make it out alive."

"But... but..."

"I'm told there's a telephone in the village, thought I might take you down there every now and again to call your parents."

"Could we go tomorrow?"

"No, tomorrow's the last day before classes start. I'll have far too much to do."

"But my parents are probably getting really worried that they haven't heard from me! How am I supposed to tell them I'm okay?"

Erik smiled and handed her a quill and a piece of parchment.

***

iPod-related heartbreak aside, Anya was just starting to think maybe the place wasn't so bad – she could totally find her way to the front door and back without awful things happening, the food was decent, and if she got up early enough she didn't have to talk to Erik until dinner – when it all fell apart.

Nobody had thought to tell her the castle was _haunted._

She was wandering through the sixth floor, whipping her wand around and hesitantly trying out the few spells she'd seen Erik and Charles perform – mostly without success, but _Lumos_ made the tip of her wand glow for a moment. Laughing, she spun in a circle to watch the tiny light trail through the air, and bumped into the wall. And fell right through it.

Walls were not supposed to _do_ that, the definition of a wall outright forbade it, so that was bad enough. But before she could recover from the very walls of Hogwarts turning on her – before she could figure out where she was, or even get up and examine her skinned knee – a creepy little voice started crooning from somewhere above her head.

"What's this, then? An early bird? Purdy birdy, early girly!"

There was an ugly little man _floating in the air_ above her, dressed in some kind of jester suit and cackling madly.

"Who the heck are you?" Anya blurted, scrambling to her feet.

The little man bowed. "Peeves the Poltergeist, my lady. At your service!" This sent him into a fresh gale of maniacal laughter, which raised all the hair on Anya's arms. _Poltergeist._ She'd seen that movie at a sleepover. One that did _not,_ thereafter, involve sleep for anyone.

"Ghosts aren't real, sweetie, it's just a movie," her mother had assured her, over and over, but apparently they _were_ real, thanks a lot, Erik! 

"Oh, is the ickle early birdie scared?" the poltergeist cried, sounding delighted, as Anya backed up tightly against the wall, trying to get as far from the ghost as possible. The wall was perfectly solid now, _of course._ "Poor ickle bird! Not to worry, Peevesie will—"

"Peeves!" bellowed an exasperated voice, and Anya looked up to see _another_ ghost coming down the corridor – gliding, actually, his body a silver transparent thing that faded away at the edges. He was wearing old Romeo-and-Juliet style clothes, with a big ruffled collar around his neck, and had his hands on his hips. "Peeves, leave the poor girl alone! Really, now, term hasn't even started, you'll have plenty of – oh, dash it all, you obnoxious thing!" Peeves was now somersaulting around the new ghost's head, batting at it with some ribbony stick like a piñata baton. "Go on, now, off with you!"

"Off with _you!"_ Peeves cried, and swung the baton at the other's ghost head again. This time it connected – _how?_ he certainly didn't look solid – and the ghost's head... fell off.

Not all the way off, not quite. It hung from the man's neck by a single strip of skin, opening the glistening insides of his neck to the air. The upside-down head scowled fiercely and shouted, "That is quite enough!"

It certainly was, some part of Anya reflected calmly, while the rest of her ran down the corridor, screaming at the top of her lungs.

***

"Anya, darling," Charles called hesitantly from the doorway, "are you really going to stay in there all day? Again?"

"Yep," Anya said from beneath the covers of her cupcake bed. It was getting rather hot and humid under there, but she refused to so much as allow a crack for air while Charles and Erik were watching.

"This is the last day before term starts, you know – the last day for you to explore and—"

"I don't want to explore!" Anya shouted. "I want to go home!"

She heard Charles and Erik murmuring to each other; finally the door to the study closed, but when she peeked out of the covers (air!), she saw Erik sitting down at the desk.

She waited for him to say something. He didn't. He just pulled out some books and parchment and started scratching away with his quill.

Well, that showed what a great parent he was, didn't it. Her real parents would have been asking why she was upset, what they could do to fix it, did she want some cookies and milk – they probably would have been already booking her plane ticket home! But not _Erik_ , oh no, he was just going to carry on as usual while his daughter huddled in her bed, scared to death.

Not that she was that scared anymore, really. She'd gotten bored after a while in bed yesterday, pulled a book about Hogwarts off Erik's shelf, and looked up the ghosts. The transparent one was Nearly Headless Nick, apparently, and yeah, he was dead and everything, but he hadn't ever hurt anybody, in fact he was supposed to be very nice. After all, he _had_ told Peeves to leave her alone. And Peeves wasn't really a ghost at all, exactly – he wasn't a dead person, just a "spirit of disorder and chaos, such as are naturally attracted, perhaps even generated, by places with large numbers of adolescents." And she still hated him violently, but he seemed less scary now that she knew what he was.

That wasn't the point. The point was that Hogwarts was stupid and awful and she wanted to go home. Not that _Erik_ cared.

Minutes dragged by. Violet, who had darted under the bed when Erik sat at the desk, cautiously poked her nose out. Anya, peeking out of the covers, saw Erik glance down at the kitten, but he did nothing to acknowledge her presence. Slowly, belly to the floor, Violet crawled toward the desk and raised a paw to pat the hem of Erik's robes, which twitched as he wrote. Anya, excited by Violet’s interest in something besides eating and growling, sat up a little, to see better. Startled by the motion, Violet hissed and slunk under the desk.

Anya didn't know whether to scream or cry. She went back under the covers.

More minutes. Anya watched the dolphins rescue the sailors in the bottle, twice, three times. From Erik, there came only the scritch of quill on parchment (because stupid wizards were too good for paper and pencil), the turning of pages, and finally, eventually, a low growl of frustration.

"What are you working on?" Anya asked.

"Come look, if you like," Erik said, without looking up.

Anya gritted her teeth. She knew exactly what Erik was trying to do. But it was so _boring_ in here. Fine, whatever. She'd get out of bed. Because _she_ wanted to.

She crawled out of the cupcake-mountain and peered over Erik's shoulder. The thing he was scritching on looked like a cross between an inkblot test and a paper snowflake. There were more of them, on other pieces of parchment and in the books lying open on all sides. "What is it?"

"It's a spell diagram. An energy map."

"Am I going to have to do those for school?" She grimaced; they looked super complicated.

"No, only very advanced students would study these. I'm trying to write a new spell."

"Why?"

Erik sighed and rubbed his eyes. "The Ministry asked me to. Asked both of us, me and Charles. We're trying to find a way to counter this." He tapped one of the other parchments.

"Lotus Letalis," Anya read. "Counter it? Like, undo it?"

"Block it, rather. Cancel it before it can hurt anyone."

"So it's a bad spell?"

"Very bad. This is the spell that paralyzed Charles." Erik's voice had gone very quiet and grim.

The reminder that Charles was paralyzed was a little startling. Anya had grown accustomed to his floating brace much quicker than she'd expected, and if he was out of the brace, he was sitting. She only really thought about it when Erik picked him up to carry to bed, or from the couch to the dinner table. One time he'd stayed in the brace too long, and his body started twitching and hurting; Erik had scolded him and taken him off to bed, rubbing his back until the twitching stopped.

"Can you fix him?" Anya asked. "If you counter the bad spell, can you fix Charles's legs?"

"No. Nothing can fix him," Erik said, even more quietly. "It's not about that. It's because the spell might still be out there. The man who cast it on Charles is dead, but most of his followers got away. Any of them might know it." For a few minutes, he kept looking through the diagrams and books – turned a page, flipped a parchment sideways. But whatever he saw seemed to displease him; he slammed the book shut and shoved it away, staring moodily after it.

The study door eased open, Charles's fluffy head poking through. "Erik, Moira and I are headed to Cerebro to reset the security spells. Do you want to come along?"

"No, I'll stay here, I'm finally getting somewhere with this. Or thought I was," he added, glaring at the book he'd shoved.

"I'll come," Anya said, because hanging around Erik in a glaring mood sounded even less fun than dealing with Peeves.

"Get your shoes on, then," Charles said, trying hard to sound nonchalant. He wasn't as good at that as Erik.

***

No one had mentioned Cerebro was on the _roof._

"Oh no. No no no. And also, no." Anya dug her nails into the doorframe, where a door at the top of some tower or other, at a word from Charles, had just opened up onto slanting shingle.

"Nothing to worry about, love, just don't look down," Charles said, holding out his hand.

Anya didn't take it. "Nope. Uh-uh. I'll just stay here."

"It's not very far, truly. See? That white dome." 

She dared a glance – and immediately clung to the door all the harder, heart pounding, hands sweating. It really wasn't very far, and there was a path of mostly-flat shingle leading to it, but on either side the roof dropped away sharply, down and down and down. "No way," she squeaked.

"All right, then," Charles said gently. "That's fine. You can wait here, but we might be quite a while, so you can run along if you like." He floated out onto the shingles.

Anya gasped and grabbed for his hand. "Are you crazy? You can't go out there! You'll fall!"

"It's all right, Anya! I assure you, I will not fall. I come out here at least once every year, and usually a few trips in between." For some reason, this made his eyes glint for a moment. "I've never fallen yet."

"But your brace – it won't hold you up this high—"

"My brace holds me three inches from the floor, unless instructed otherwise, even if it's very high, even if it's slanted or wet. Frankly, I'm safer out here in the brace than I would be walking."

Anya stared down at the three-inch gap below Charles's feet, trying not to shake. "I don't want you to go out there. Why do you need to go out there?"

"I have to go to Cerebro to reset the school's security spells, the ones that keep us all safe from intruders and Muggle detection. They can only be cast to full effect from Cerebro. It's very important." He tipped her chin up. "It's very kind of you to be concerned, Anya, but I really will be quite safe, as I always have before. All right?" He tried to ease his hand from her grip.

Anya gulped and nodded, letting him go. Charles stroked her hair once and turned away, gliding across the shingles. Watching him made it hard for Anya to breathe, but she wouldn't look away, not until Charles was safely inside the dome.

***

Charles returned from Cerebro fully intact, as promised, and cooked them dinner himself, rather than calling for the house-elves or going down to the Great Hall, in honor of it being "their last hurrah" before classes began. It was a quiet meal, everyone apparently preoccupied by thoughts of tomorrow – at least Anya certainly was, barely making an effort to pick at her overcooked roast and underboiled vegetables.

"You'll finally be able to meet Raven tomorrow, she'll arrive first thing in the morning," Charles was saying as Anya bit into her dinner roll – and got a mouthful of unmixed flour. Turning away from Charles to hide her grimace, she caught sight of Erik doing exactly the same, and couldn't help returning his smile. He winked and handed her a Cauldron Cake under the table.

She nibbled it in bed, after dinner, her eyes wandering the dark study. Light from the cracked-open door lay across her school robes, already laid out, though the other students wouldn't be arriving until evening. Anya licked crumbs from her fingers and huddled deeper under her mountain of ruffles, wondering where she would be sleeping the next night.

"You're welcome to stay with us, of course," Charles had begun, only for Erik to cut in with, "But I think it would be better for you to sleep in the dorms with your classmates. You'll deal with enough accusations of favoritism as it is."

Well, fine. Anya knew when she wasn't wanted. And she was sure the other kids would be a lot more fun than Erik anyway.

Charles's voice drifted through the crack in the door. "Of course, educational experiences are not limited to the classroom, and it is my home – my _hope_ , rather – that this new year will be a new – I mean that this year will be newer – Dash it all! I really should be accustomed to these things by now, it's my third start-of-term speech. My _job_ is to stand in front of students and talk, I do it every day with no trouble—"

"If it helps," Erik said, voice a lazy drawl of amusement, "no one will really be listening. They just want you to finish up so they can eat."

"Excellent point. Maybe I should just cut this paragraph – oh, blast!" From the sound of it, he'd just dropped his notes.

"I'll get them."

"No, no, I can just – You don't have to bother—"

"It's no bother. Maybe I like it down here." The lazy amusement in Erik's voice was tinged with something else, now, sly and a little smug. Charles let out a breathy, unsteady "Ummm..."

Oh, heaven _help!_ Anya got out of bed and eased the door shut.

When she turned around, she saw Violet freeze in the act of crawling out from under the desk. Quickly Anya looked away, and stood very still. _Doesn't matter to me if you come out or not, do what you want, there's a girl..._

Violet crept across the room to the little container where her cat food was kept, and starting batting at it, mewing.

"Oh, no, I forgot to feed you, didn't I?" Anya whispered. "I'm sorry!" She walked toward the food container, trying to move soft and smooth, to glide like Charles; Violet backed away a few steps, but didn't run, even when Anya knelt down and pried open the rattling container. She filled the kitten's bowl and sat cross-legged in front of it.

Violet stared at the food, stared at Anya. Didn't move.

Anya shifted around sideways, putting the bowl beside her left leg, and pretended to watch the ship in the bottle.

Ever so slowly, Violet crept up to the bowl and started eating. Ever so slowly, after the food was about half gone, Anya started sliding her hand toward the kitten. Violet saw it, froze a moment, then cautiously resumed eating, her tail twitching. Finally, Anya was able to brush her hand down the kitten's back. Violet didn't arch into the touch, but she didn't hiss or run away either; it was possible she was purring, just a little. Anya was smiling so widely her face hurt.

And then the air split wide open with a horrible wailing noise, like a siren caught in a taffy puller.

Anya shrieked and covered her ears, Violet vanished under the desk quick as a bullet, and Erik burst through the door with his wand out and snatched Anya onto her feet.

"Intruder Alarm," he barked. "Stay close to me."

Intruder? What? Anya kept her hands over her ears and followed Erik, who kept his arm thrown back to keep her behind him. Charles, standing ready at the door, also had his wand out. If he and Erik both looked pretty disheveled, Anya rather thought from their expressions that it wouldn't make the intruder any less dead. Somehow that only made her more scared.

Charles opened the door with one swift movement, ready to hex whoever might be behind it, but there was no one. They proceeded carefully down the stairs, which were no longer moving.

"Don't try to go back up," Erik murmured to Anya. "Your feet will be trapped."

"Go on down to the bottom, Erik," Charles said quietly over his shoulder. "I'll search the office." He slipped through the only other door to be found in this stairwell, while Erik and Anya continued down.

At the bottom of the stairs, they still had seen no sign of an intruder. The awful wail was still going. Anya, trying not to cry or cling to Erik's arm, wished she had her wand – though what would she do with it, make pretty lights? Why was someone trying to break in? What did they want? What if they tried to hurt her, or Erik or Charles or Violet? She tightened her hands over her ears and wished her dad were here, her dad would know how to protect them, he was in the Army and he would know exactly what to do.

Erik motioned her to stay still, several steps up from the bottom, and threw the tower door open, wand at the ready.

No one. A dim corridor, silent and still. There was a tangled something lying on the stone floor, and Anya gasped when she saw it – was it a monster, a body, what was it?

It was a net, she saw as Erik stooped to pick it up.

"Security measure," he explained. "Supposed to trap whoever tries to get into the Tower without a password."

Anya managed not to say out loud that there was no one in it. This day was stupid enough without stating the obvious.

She nearly moaned with relief as the wailing finally stopped. "Erik?" Charles called from his office door.

"Net's empty," Erik called back. "No sign of disturbance. You?"

"Nothing. Not a quill out of place."

Erik started back up the stairs, net in hand; apparently the stairs were no longer in attack mode. When Anya caught up, he and Charles were peering at the net in the office doorway, poking it with their wands.

"False alarm, I suppose," Charles murmured. "Resetting the security spells sometimes makes everything hyperactive for a day or two."

"Might have been Peeves," Erik growled.

"I'm going back to bed," Anya announced, her voice very loud in her still-ringing ears.

"Of course. Very sorry about all this, love," Charles said, but Anya was already halfway up the stairs.

She slammed the door to Erik's study behind her, and threw herself onto the bed, pummeling the pillows, burying her head in them to scream.

Something thumped under the desk, and she saw the flash of Violet's eyes retreating, frightened by the sudden racket.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Anya moaned. "I didn't mean to scare you even worse. Come on out, sweetie." She crawled off the bed and lay on the floor to peer under the desk. "Violet, please come out. I thought we were friends now." Violet, who was little more than a bright pair of eyes in the shadows, made that burbling growl deep in her throat and inched further away.

Anya smushed her face into the carpet with a frustrated sigh. "I know. The alarm scared you. I bet you hate it here. I sure do. I hate this whole place. I hate the walls that aren't walls and the paintings that watch you and the ghosts and the moving stairs and I hate stupid _magic_ always screwing everything up. Why couldn't Dad have been my real dad? Why did I have to come here at all?"

Some tiny sound – an intake of breath? the shift of a footstep? – made Anya suddenly aware that she was not alone in the room. She turned her head and saw Erik in the doorway, his hand still on the knob.

Anya felt a hot flush of mingled guilt and anger, embarrassment and defiance. She dropped her eyes and, without acknowledging Erik, climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Erik closed the door again without a word.


End file.
